Mahama bullish about economy

President John Mahama has said he expects the country to go beyond the projected growth for the West African sub-region by the Bretton Wood Institutions.

“The African average growth rate predicted by the World Bank and IMF is 3 per cent and for Ghana they predict 3.3 per cent, I’m more bullish, I believe that Ghana will grow closer to 4 per cent, maybe between 3.8 and 4 per cent, and we predict that in 2017, Ghana’s economy is going to grow by about 6 per cent.

“And, so, this country is doing well, we have resolved the power crisis, we’ve been able to match demand to supply, and, so, the electricity crisis that hit us is gradually becoming a thing of the past.

“Today the FPSO is shut down but we’ve made contingency arrangements and we are firing most of the power plants using crude oil and providing enough electricity for our people because we’ve done the structural changes that would ensure that the utilities can continue to provide us with power,” Mr Mahama said in an interview with Sunrise FM in the Eastern Region on Thursday April 14.

“Today we are supplying diesel and petrol to Burkina Faso and Mali from our Bolga Depot. Our Bolga Depot was shut down for so many years, the pipeline from Buipe to Bolga was not operational, today we are pumping fuel from Buipe to Bolga and we are loading 40 trucks a day to Burikina Faso and Mali, I mean if that is not economic progress, I don’t know what else anybody will call economic progress, yes we’ve been through a period of challenges and we’ve had to make sacrifices as citizens but I believe that in everyone’s life, there are times when you have to make sacrifices in order that things get better for the future, we are working to ensure that we create a better future for not only our citizens of today but for our citizens of tomorrow. And I believe we are doing a good job at it. The economy is more resilient today than it was in the past, it’s not an economy in crisis, absolutely not, if you see and economy in crisis you’d know that it is an economy in crisis. This economy is not in crisis and it is growing,” the president added.